The 2004 pre-elections are almost on us. With a field of about a dozen Dems and the unfortunate choice of President Gentleman's "C", how many good outcomes can there be. The republicans are semi, no, completely monolithic and getting more so every day thanks to some of their good little storm troopers like Baby-face Santorum and the ever prick-tastic Tommy-Boy Delay. I keep expecting to see a rerun of 2001: A Space Odyssey with a computer edited monolith with some GOP slogan on it...but I digress.

On the subject of the 2004 elections, this photo was up on the CBS News site with the caption, "You can expect to see this photo and variations of it often in the 2004 presidential campaign."

I'm not sure, but I think that any picture of Smirk at Ground Zero should be fair game for anyone to take issue with the campaign and the GOP. After promising immediate aid to NYC, it never came, after promising to fund the HSA, it sort of got left out of budget discussions and after invading Afghanistan, the administration has done nothing to ensure the stability or security of that country. To the point where, reportedly both the Taliban and their masters, Al-Qaida are making a comeback.

There is a lot that remains to be said before the ballots are counted in November of next year, one of the things that should be reiterated by those opposed to the Smirkster is that true to form, he ran out on the brave men (and women) like this gent he used for a photo-op and no more.

The republican spin machine is putting out nonsense like this already:

Presidential message guru Karen Hughes calls it the defining moment of Mr. Bush's presidency. Aides say that his words "I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon," are the Bush equivalent of Ronald Reagan's "tear down that wall."

The reality is that more walls are being built, less freedom is becoming the accepted norm and we are looking more like the Soviets than America, and Bush is totally deaf, he hears nothing except the cash register and the crooning of sycophants. And it's the machinations of HughesRoveCo that are enabling these changes for the worse.

Regime Change in 2004.